“Let’s go Julienne!” Nori yelled while looking at Archie.

Archie wriggled back and forth as he tried to dispel the noodle that restrained him. He knew getting out would be more than a physical feat, but he couldn’t help but to squirm in his restraints.

Okay. Dispel. Essence. Out…my…elbow. Elbow. Elbow. Where’s my elbow?

The cheering crowd became background noise as Archie refined his awareness down to a point. He started from the top. He blinked to feel his eyes. Moved his jaw to find his chin. Turned his neck back and forth. Flexed his chest. Flexed his biceps. Flexed his forearms.

That’s a start. Now do that…but…with essence.

He started with his left arm. Essence gathered near his shoulder and slipped down to his elbow…and then to his hand and back up like blood. Failure.

“You got this Archie!”

He tried again, concentrating on the epicenter of his essence as it worked his way down his arm. He tried to slow it down, but his hands were like a magnet, pulling the essence down as it got near. The essence went into his palm and dissipated again. Finesse wasn’t working.

Archie looked over to check Julienne’s progress. Julienne looked back. His face twisted with exertion, but also…anger? Determination? Something about his expression wasn’t just about getting free—it was about beating Archie.

Archie felt the spark. A competitive fire blazed within him, spurring him on.

Power, then.

Archie didn’t try to control the flow, instead just forcing essence into his fingertips. As it surged through his arm, he tried to imagine a valve opening in his forearm to relieve the pressure. For a brief moment, he felt some of his essence glide across the essence of the noodle. Progress.

At a cost.

In his concentration on his elbow, he had allowed a large portion of essence to seep out of his hand. Archie weighed the balance of power and stamina in his mind. He needed to pace himself, but he also needed to overcompensate in order to feel essence where he wanted.

He let the essence surge through his arm again. His essence butted up against that of the noodle. He tried to force them against each other to create a sort of friction. He continued to push essence down his arm. The point of contact grew, allowing Archie to realize that despite Tarragon’s “weak” casting of the spell, the essence in the noodle was still much more potent than what he could gather in such an awkward spot in his body.

And then he had an epiphany.

He could cheat.

He didn’t need to overpower the essence in the noodle. He just needed to manipulate it.

He infiltrated the noodle with his essence and expanded it like the elevator noodle. It loosened and fell around his ankles.

As Archie’s side cheered for their apparent victory, the noodle binding Julienne started to thin, little holes forming in it as it evaporated. He looked at Archie and then Tarragon, desperate to know who had won.

“Archie didn’t do it right!” Yarrow protested.

“Suck it, Yarrow!” Oliver yelled back. “Never doubted!”

“Who won?” Archie and Julienne asked in unison.

Tarragon laughed. “I suppose you both did.”

“But I actually canceled out the conjuration!” Julienne complained.

“But I escaped first. That was the challenge.”

“No, I—”

“Now, now,” Tarragon said, holding up his hands to shush them. “Julienne wins for actually dissipating the noodle.”

“Ha!”

“But Archie wins for escaping first.”

“But he didn’t do it right!”

Tarragon shrugged. “You think it matters how you do it in battle? It just matters that you do it. That being said, Archie, you can cheat in a real fight, but be sure to do the drill as prescribed during our training.”

“Yes sir,” Archie said with a stern nod. Tarragon had inspired a sort of militaristic response in Archie.

“Now shake hands,” Tarragon said.

Archie and Julienne exchanged an awkward look. Neither had really spoken since the incident in Cafe Julienne, and any exchange they did have had been as curt as could be. But Archie didn’t want to stay mad at Julienne. And perhaps Julienne felt the same way, because they both extended their hands at the same time. They shook.

“So who’s making lunch?” Oliver asked.

“Hm.” Tarragon looked around at the students. “Well, I suppose these two shouldn’t have all of the fun.”

Tarragon flicked his hand, conjuring a noodle that ensnared Oliver. Then he did the same to Yarrow. With speed and precision, Tarragon managed to bind everyone in a matter of seconds, even rebinding Archie and Julienne again. The students screamed with glee and shock as they all wriggled around.

“Last team out loses. And if you cheat, I’m tying you up again.”

Julienne managed to escape in just a matter of seconds, robbing Archie of his triumph. Archie diverted his essence to where the noodle touched—his hip, his knee, his elbow—but failed every time to sufficiently control his flow. His essence moved on its own like an uncontrollable tempest shifting around his body.

Julienne coached his team, helping Nori and Akando to dispel their restraints. On Archie’s side, Barley was the first to succeed.

“Um, Head Chef Tarragon?” Julienne called out as he watched Yarrow struggle.

“Oh wow,” Tarragon remarked as he studied Yarrow. The noodle was thinning out, but not due to counteracting essence. Instead, beads of acid had started to grow on the noodle, tearing holes in it. “Okay, okay. You get a pass. I don’t want you to burn yourself.”

Tarragon waved his hand in the air and the noodle disappeared.

Archie turned his focus back inward. Forget the elbow. Forget the knee. Forget precision He was going to blast his way out of this.

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He bent his hand around to put his palm against the noodle and released a blast of essence. He felt his essence collide—not glide—against the essence in the noodle. The forces raged against each other, each claiming a portion of victory. He was reminded of the scar on his leg and how he felt essence fight and die that night.

Stamina be damned.

Archie released essence full blast through his palm. It ate away at the noodle like Yarrow’s acid, leaving a small hole. He tried to slide his hand to another spot on the noodle but had no mobility in his arm or wrist.

He went for his elbow next, overloading his entire arm with essence and letting it out in a wasteful blast. The noodle frayed as it started to vanish.

Archie prepared to do it again…

…but then he got hungry.

His breathing grew ragged. Desperate. His chest tightened, even though the noodle had loosened its grip. He thought of the licertes. He thought of the voice. He thought of his grandfather. The essence in the noodle bristled like a rough cloth on sensitive skin. An episode was coming, he just knew it. He needed to get it off.

“Get me out,” he whispered to himself. “Get me out.”

Nori skipped over to him with a grin. “Archie, Archie, Archie,” Nori chided. She was all smiles and playful mockery. “I expected more from you.”

“Get me out,” he whispered again, louder this time.

“Archie? You’re pale.” In a flash, Nori went from playful to concerned. She furrowed her eyebrows, hardened her jaw, and hovered over Archie with an expression he had seen too many times already. “Hey, hey, you’re okay. You’re okay. Look at me. You’re okay.”

Archie looked into her eyes. In the sunlight, they were more brown than black, little slivers of caramel that calmed Archie just enough for him to regain his focus.

He opened the floodgates. His essence slammed to one side of his body like a wave. He let it flow freely from his skin. It burned against the noodle. The other side of his body went numb.

But it worked.

The noodle started to disintegrate. Archie thrashed against it, forcing it to unravel as it loosened. Nori pulled off a chunk as the rest fell.

“See? See? You’re okay.”

“Yeah…yeah.” Archie rubbed his eyebrows as he tried to get a handle on his breathing. As his color returned, so did his playfulness. “You traitor,” he joked. “Picking Julienne.”

“It’s called sucking up,” she said through gritted teeth as she punched his shoulder—softer than usual since she couldn’t be sure if he had truly recovered. “We need his connections. I talked to him the other day. He might have something for us.”

“Hm.” Archie hated relying on Julienne. It hadn’t been so bad doing it once, since Archie and Nori were theoretically doing him a favor by helping him for his birthday trial. But after screwing up that opportunity, Archie didn’t want anything from Julienne and definitely didn’t enjoy holding his hand out begging. Archie hated himself for getting Nori into a mess that he couldn’t solve alone.

The feeling was tighter on his chest than the noodle had been.

“Team Julienne wins!” Tarragon announced. Archie turned to see Sutton as the last one still wrapped up, his glasses askew on his face.

They gathered in the fields again the next morning, jittering with excitement about what the day’s class would bring. They speculated wildly, suggesting maybe a repeat of the noodle challenge, or maybe their first foray into conjuring something themselves, or maybe learning more advanced defensive techniques like skin transformation. The possibilities of conjuration had driven them into feverous anticipation.

“Laps!” Tarragon yelled to start the class.

The students looked at each other with confusion.

“Laps!” he repeated.

“Walk it, jog it, whatever. Everyone’s going around that lake today,” Tarragon seemed pleased by the groans from the students. “What? You think being fit doesn’t matter? Wrong! Get in touch with your body, get in touch with your essence! Be glad it’s just one lap today. Go. NOW!”

“What’s with these teachers and running,” Oliver complained as the students all started shuffling their feet toward the lake.

“Archie, hold up a second,” Tarragon said. He waited until everyone else ran out of earshot. “Are you okay? After yesterday?”

Archie looked down at his feet. “So you noticed.”

“Well…” Tarragon scratched at his slightly deformed cheekbone. “I’m friends with Rowan. He told me about…He told me to keep an eye on you.”

“Yeah…” Archie kicked at the dirt. “Did he tell you about all the secrets he kept?”

Tarragon chuckled. “He told me that, too. He’s human. Just like the rest of us.”

“When I first came here, I didn’t think Black Jackets were human,” Archie sighed. “I thought, at that point, you must be something more.”

“What about me?” Tarragon pinched his black collar. “Am I more than just a man?”

Archie shrugged. “From what I know, yeah.”

Tarragon grinned. “I’m sure I’ll have plenty of chances to disappoint you. But so far, I’m impressed with you. You have a fighter’s spirit, you know.”

Archie lifted his face to Tarragon’s, but this time, the Head Chef’s single blue eye wasn’t piercing. It was a cool ocean of sympathy.

“I do?”

“Yeah. You panicked, yeah, but you didn’t give up. You found a way through it. You even did it the right way instead of cheating.”

“Sorry about that…”

“Don’t be!” Tarragon clapped a hand on Archie’s shoulder. “I meant what I said when I called you a winner. There are a lot of Chefs who really think…narrowly. You showed lateral thinking. And lateral thinkers always make the best fighters.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, think about it. When two experienced fighters go head to head, the one that wins is often the one that gets off the first surprise.”

Archie thought back to Pepper Ivy getting Tataki drunk during their fight. Tataki was undoubtedly more skilled, but Pepper Ivy had tricked her way into a win.

“So tell me, fighter,” Tarragon continued. “What’s your plan?

“What do you mean?”

“Look, even the bookish students spend their first few months cooking in the kitchen but fantasizing about fighting out here. So how far have you gotten on your own? I see you’ve already gotten some pastamancy down. What else are you good at? What do you want to learn?”

An uncontrollable grin formed on Archie’s face. He’d been waiting for someone to ask.

“Well, I’ve been thinking…” Archie’s voice couldn’t contain his excitement. He had been waiting for someone—anyone—to ask. The fact that he got to talk shop with one of history’s greatest fighters was almost too much to handle. “I figure I need three things—defense, close combat, and ranged combat.”

“Mhm,” Tarragon said, trying not to laugh at the boy’s giddiness.

“Defense. Candied skin. I’ve been growing sugar cane and making some candy, but I really should be making more. I figure that’s going to be tough to learn—getting essence to form all over my body.”

“That’s right. It requires full body control,” Tarragon said, nodding. “It’s good to have something that can encase your entire body.”

Tarragon held his forearm out to Archie. Something about it seemed different. Archie poked at it. Tough. He ran his finger across Tarragon’s forearm. It felt like leather.

“I went with the rind of an orange,” Tarragon explained.

Archie smiled. “Cool.” His voice whipped back into a frenzied pace. “Close combat, I think I’ve got that covered with pasta. I feel like I’m already pretty good at it. If I could use it like a whip. Or a lasso. I could restrain things.”

“So far so good. And ranged combat?”

“I don’t know yet,” Archie said with a little pout. “Best I’ve got so far is blueberries. When…”

The thought of the licertes made him pause.

“When…I’ve thrown blueberries before. They…hardened and it felt like they sped up after they left my hand. But they’re just blueberries. What can they do?”

Tarragon laughed. He conjured an orange and threw it at a boulder forty feet away. Upon impact, the orange splintered the boulder into a thousand pieces, shrapnel flying over the field.

“They can do quite a bit,” Tarragon said. “That being said, it’s not all about the damage you do.”

A memory struck Tarragon, making his posture relax and his eyes wander off into his past.

“Ya know, back in my fighting days, there was this guy…it was…Jimbu…maybe Jahkya? Some Khalyan name. Anyways, he was strong as an ox, but slow.

“Now, there’s ways you can make yourself faster, and we’ll talk about that, but even with that, this guy just couldn’t close the gap. But he had a deadly punch, so keeping that gap was important. He was slow, but if he landed that punch, he won.

“I went four matches against him untouched. Then that fifth match he threw blueberries at me and they exploded into this thick purple mist. It really hung in the air. Like a smokescreen. Couldn’t see through it.”

He nodded and laughed at the memory.

“And then what happened?” Archie asked.

“He came through the smokescreen when I wasn’t ready and I woke up the next day unable to see straight.” He laughed. “I think it was my only loss that year.”

Archie laughed. Aubergine, Quince, Pomona, and even Colby had all been great. But this was the teacher he had been waiting for.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Tarragon said, poking his finger into Archie’s chest. “Keep fighting, but let yourself be a kid. My life changed when I went out into the real world, and I’ve made the best of it, but I was never able to just be a kid again. That’s my big regret. Do that, and I’ll teach you some stuff.”

“Deal.”

They shook hands. Tarragon nodded at the lake.

“Now just because they got a head start doesn’t mean I’ll excuse you for finishing in last place.”